Industrial Re-Use of Composites

Albert ten Busschen

A chapter in Waste Material Recycling in the Circular Economy - Challenges and Developments from IntechOpen

Abstract: The amount of obsolete composites is increasing on a global scale, for example yacht hulls from a growing leisure industry and large rotor blades from wind energy production. Until now it has not been possible to recycle or disassemble thermoset composites into their original constituent parts of fibre reinforcement and resins. Subsequently a new method of re-use has been developed. This method involves machining the obsolete composite product into strips or flakes for re-use as reinforcing elements which, when combined with fresh resin and fibre, enable the production of a brand new component. This, in effect, preserves and re-uses the mechanical properties of the original obsolete composite. This method has been proven in manufacturing retaining walls, also guide beams for canals, crane mats and bridge decking, all using the strips or flakes from end of life composite products. For use on an industrial scale, a positive business case is imperative. In order to prove the industrial technology, new products have to contain a sufficiently high percentage of re-used composites in combination with automated processing. This has been achieved with "push-pultrusion" which is in essence a further development of the long established pultrusion process.

Keywords: composite; thermoset; fibre reinforced; end-of-life; rotorblade; re-use (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/77980 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ito:pchaps:240059

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.99452

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from IntechOpen
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Slobodan Momcilovic ().